Just last month we were in a supposed labor shortage and now the jobs report is strong?
It's funny how "no one wants to work" has quietly turned into "we hired too much and are laying off large swathes of people" and "record level of unemployment"
Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering
161–170 of 204 posts
Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
And their stock soared 25% yesterday because of their profitability. Are you trying to prove the point I’m making or just mad at me that I explain capitalism?
I think many people (myself included) see it as a problem that capitalism so clearly works against the interest of the many to benefit the few. We understand why stock buybacks and layoffs increase shareholder value, and therein lies the problem.
Every other system had more wealth destroying and catastrophic outcome for society.
Not arguing for “unrestricted capitalism that is never tamed” - but with a functioning social net and access to basic needs for almost everyone it’s probably pretty amazing.
You are also missing, that for most people this is probably great: less high income individuals competing for resources in the marriage, housing, etc market. They see their wages increased and their relative purchasing power in society lifted and are happy about this development.
Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering
#163I really hate financial headlines. The S&P is still up 3.08% this week . This headline makes today's 0.65% drop sound catastrophic.
Yeah… Now, 2 hours after open, the market is flat from yesterday. So much for sinking.
Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the nonsense narrative the mainstream media is trying to pedal to drive populist engagement, but it doesn't make any sense. The interest rate hikes have dramatically decreased wealth inequality and tempered inflation without affecting unemployment. The Federal Reserve has shown that they don't care that their high interest rates are driving down stocks, so they'll continue to allow them to tumble. By contrast…
> The interest rate hikes have dramatically decreased wealth inequality Citation please. > tempered inflation without affecting unemployment If they've tempered inflation, then why did the Fed just raise them again, and suggest they might be raised even more? > people think that it means that it's their goal to decrease employment No, the Fed has explicitly said that their goal is to reduce wage growth. They're happy…
> Citation please.
Look at stock prices, which are primarily owned by the wealthy. The richest 500 people collectively lost $1.4 trillion last year.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-12-29/billionai...
> If they've tempered inflation, then why did the Fed just raise them again, and suggest they might be raised even more?
Inflation is still at 6.5%, which is greater than the interest rate.
> No, the Fed has explicitly said that their goal is to reduce wage growth.
No, they explicitly did not say this. This is the nonsense framing that I'm talking about. The Federal Reserve does fear a wage price spiral, but that's because that's a feedback loop that undermines economic stability. Inflation affects everyone. Meanwhile, wage increases benefit some people more than others, for example younger workers who are happy to job hop. Meanwhile, others are stuck paying higher prices on the same income.
Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering
#165Considering that most of the growth was in leisure/hospitality, I interpret this move as the official "end" of the lockdown era. We have achieved full reopening/replacement of the bars, restaurants, and hotels that shut down during COVID, who proceeded to hire back all their low wage service workers. This explains the explosion in job growth with a stagnant avg hourly earnings rate - the new jobs are mostly low wage…
I have a feeling a revision to the downside is in the near future. Jobs number games get played during interest rate raise periods.
Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The interest rate hikes have dramatically decreased wealth inequality Citation please. > tempered inflation without affecting unemployment If they've tempered inflation, then why did the Fed just raise them again, and suggest they might be raised even more? > people think that it means that it's their goal to decrease employment No, the Fed has explicitly said that their goal is to reduce wage growth. They're happy…
> Citation please. Look at stock prices, which are primarily owned by the wealthy. The richest 500 people collectively lost $1.4 trillion last year. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-12-29/billionai... > If they've tempered inflation, then why did the Fed just raise them again, and suggest they might be raised even more? Inflation is still at 6.5%, which is greater than the interest rate. > No, the Fed has…
> The richest 500 people collectively lost $1.4 trillion last year.
As far as inequality is concerned, does it really matter whether Elon Musk's net worth is $300 billion vs. $150 billion? The differences were already obscene before the pandemic temporarily inflated them further. I wouldn't call it a dramatic decrease in inequality when most people are still basically standing in place economically. It's easier for the wealthy to go down a lot (temporarily), because they have so much farther to fall, starting from a toweringly high position.
Small changes of income and wealth make a big difference to those at the bottom. Relatively massive differences of income and wealth actually don't make much real difference to those at the top. They're mere statistics, points in a game, bragging rights.
The reason the Fed is willing to temporarily tank stocks is because the wealthy know it's just a temporarily blip that doesn't really hurt them too badly in the long run. The only thing that could hurt the wealthy in the long run is a fundamental shift in bargaining power between capital and labor. That's precisely what the Fed is trying to stop now. As you call it "a wage price spiral", which could dramatically improve the economic position of the working class.
The price of consumer goods can be raised more quickly than the price of labor, which is why in the short term, workers may be hit by inflation, and wage growth lags behind more slowly. But eventually something has to give, and a long-term supply/demand shift of labor would eventually benefit labor in the long run... unless wage inflation is nipped in the bud.
Sometimes you have to make short-term sacrifices for long-term benefit. Both capital and labor know this. On the labor side, a strike for example can be very painful short-term to workers, but the goal is to improve their status long term. Consumer price inflation can work the same way.
> Inflation affects everyone. Meanwhile,
Everything in the economy has a differential effect on different people and groups of people. "Inflation" is an abstraction. The CPI for example is a somewhat arbitrary "basket" of goods. But if you look at individual items, some prices go up a little, some a lot, some go down a little, some a lot, and some stay the same. I find terms like "inflation" and "the economy" to be relatively useless abstractions. It's the differences that are crucial.
What we've seen during the recent decades of low "inflation" has been increasing disparities of income and wealth between the top and everyone else. You call that "stability". I call it unstable and unsustainable.
Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
You seem to be making a number of assumptions here that don't necessarily hold. For instance, yes, a house is often a middle class family's biggest asset. But, there's no way to directly tap into that asset without selling or taking out some kind of loan against it (second mortgage, HELOC, even a reverse mortgage if they're old enough). All of those things have, let's say, significant costs and disadvantages. Yes, "i…
> For instance, yes, a house is often a middle class family's biggest asset. But, there's no way to directly tap into that asset without selling or taking out some kind of loan against it (second mortgage, HELOC, even a reverse mortgage if they're old enough). All of those things have, let's say, significant costs and disadvantages. You're missing the biggest advantage: They bought the house with a fixed mortgage pay…
> Would you answer an unknown number and spend time taking a survey?
> ...the survey respondents are always biased toward specific groups
This could cut both ways, I think.
Anecdotally, I grew up poor and we let all unknown numbers go to voicemail. No one was calling to give us a million dollars, we just presumed it was a bill collector.
Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering
#168The wealthiest 10% of Americans own 90% of these stocks. Most of you reading this are in the top 10%. Stock prices are a game among the wealthy who haven’t demanded that workers should be paid more to lower the absurdly high corporate profits.
Article outlining the above claim:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-...
Again this is wealth so the top 10% is households with at least $1.2 million USD in net worth.
> The top 1% gained over $6.5 trillion in corporate equities and mutual fund wealth during the pandemic, according to the latest data from the Federal Reserve.
> The bottom 90% of Americans held about 11% of stocks, and added $1.2 trillion in wealth during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering
#169"Curiously strong mints"
Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inflation benefits people in debt and light labor markets benefit people who earn a wage. It hurts people who already have accumulated capital in the form of bonds and stocks. The Fed acts to protect the interests of the very rich, at the expense of the lower and middle class. It is a balance. The government is a democracy and corporations need customers, but the wealth gap must be maintained, lest you lose the suppo…
> Inflation benefits people in debt And weighed by the amount of debt, those are mostly people rich enough to hire specialists for the tedious parts of using some (most) of their assets as collateral for further investment. People living paycheck to paycheck, on maxed out credit cards, those are not the winners of inflation you are looking for.
Those people have lots of debt in the form of home, car and student loans.